This post is an update to our earlier one today, which highlighted early, unexplained disparities seen by academic experts working on behalf of South Carolina Democrats, between paper-ballot absentee voting results and those from the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen systems used on Election Day last Tuesday in South Carolina for the Democratic U.S. Senate primary race between the unheard of, jobless candidate Alvin Greene (who did absolutely no campaigning), and state legislator Vic Rawl (who did).

As we detailed in the previous post, Greene's "victory," thus far, seems to make absolutely no legitimate sense to state Democrats, or anybody else, in truth. The disparities in the voting patterns were described by experts quoted in Politico earlier today as "curious," "staggering," and "red flags," and by Election Integrity experts who we quoted as "clear signs of election fraud." Please read that post first for the full background on this story.

We've already included one update to our previous post, based on a post by Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight.com, a site which focuses on statistical analysis of elections. That post examined the possibility of the race factor in Greene's "win" over Rawl as the former is African American while the latter is white. Schaller's analysis of precinct data in the race, however, as compared to non-white registrants in each, found "no relationship between the race of a county's registrants and Greene's performance in that county," thus largely, but not entirely, ruling out race as an explanation for the bizarre results.

While Schaller had posited four existing possibilities for what "could have happened here" in his original article --- including the possibility of "systematic" election fraud --- he has now filed a follow-up report describing the matter as "getting weirder by the hour." His new piece includes a number of reports from other statistical experts which "suggest tampering, or at least machine malfunction, perhaps at the highest level"...

Schaller's follow-up piece quotes from a number of analyses by statistician and election expert colleagues of his which narrow down the possibilities of what "could have happened here," to just "two scenarios."

The analyses by Schaller's colleagues find, among other things, statistical tests in which "Rawl's Election Day vote totals depart from the expected distribution at 90% confidence. In other words, the observed vote pattern for Rawl could be expected to occur only about 10% of the time by chance."

The results of those tests lead Schaller to believe "something smells here."

Another analysis debunks the theory that the results were due to GOP dirty-tricksters, crossing over in SC's open primary to vote for the candidate presumed to be the easiest one for Republican incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint to defeat in November.

"In conclusion," writes the author of the analysis examining that theory, "while the voting patterns in the D-Senate primary are strange and may not be totally legitimate, they don't bear the expected hallmarks that would arise in the case of a Republican plant."

Schaller then summarizes what he sees as the dwindling possibilities for what may have happened as such:

[W]e can almost certainly eliminate the idea that there was a coordinated GOP effort to get Republican and/or conservative voters to pick up Democratic ballots with the intent of selecting Greene as DeMint's general election opponent.

That leaves what I think are now two scenarios:

A. The first is a combination of the first and second possibilities of my initial post: Greene was a nobody, but Rawl was darn near close to a nobody, and thus Greene's alphabetical ballot position, coupled with whatever signal the spelling of his surname sent to some African Americans that he might be (and in fact is) an African American, with a dash of Rawl's high disapproval among the 18 percent of survey respondents who had heard of him, combined to take what in theory might otherwise have been a 50/50 split among two broadly unknown candidates and turned it instead into a 59/41 race.

B. Somebody with access to software and machines engineered a very devious manipulation of the vote returns--but not so devious that he/she/they were unable to cover the tracks of the digit patterns in those results.

While we're certainly not a statistical analyst, and nowhere near as smart as Schaller, the first of his two scenarios above does not seem to take into account the disparities noted previously between the paper-based absentee votes and those cast on the unverifiable touch-screen systems on Election Day.

While Scenario A would seem to make potential sense, it seems that the same voting patterns would apply to both Election Day votes cast at the polls as well as absentee votes cast in the same race. But that wasn't the case, as we detailed in our previous article, which quotes academic experts who found, among other similar anomalies, "a staggering 84 percent to 16 percent margin" in favor of Rawl in Lancaster County, where "Greene easily led among Election Day voters by 17 percentage points."

Overall, a study by an academic expert has found, according to the Rawl campaign, that "the result in the Senate election is statistically highly significant: Rawl performs 11 percentage points better among absentee voters than he does among Election Day voters."

If Scenario A doesn't similarly apply to both the absentee and Election Day vote counts, that would seem to point to his Scenario B, "a very devious manipulation of the vote returns," or what we'll call "Scenario B.1," the somewhat less nefarious possibility of out-and-out e-voting system malfunction.

Malfunction and/or programming error with ES&S systems is neither unheard of, nor particularly rare. We experienced our own similar machine failure while attempting to vote (unsucessfully) on an ES&S e-voting system this week in Los Angeles, on the same day as the South Carolina primary, and previously, two years before when the very same system mis-recorded four out of twelve of our votes.

South Carolina itself is no stranger to failure and known breakdowns of the e-voting system. In the 2008 Republican Party primary in Horry County, as we reported at the time, the ES&S machines failed to work at all for much of the day, leaving voters scrambling to find bits of paper, and even paper towels, on which to cast emergency paper ballots. For the Democratic primary the following week, the party advised voters to print out sample ballots from off of the Internet before coming to vote, just in case the same train wreck occurred.

And, of course, we could offer countless links to BRAD BLOG reports detailing ES&S touch-screen systems flipping the intended votes of voters right on the screen. While one would presume a massive case of on-screen vote flipping would be noticed and reported, the fact is, as we've tried to warn, a vote can appear to register accurately on the screen, but be recorded for anybody or nobody internally, in the only tally that actually counts. It remains, as we've often pointed out, impossible to know that any vote has ever been recorded accurately --- ever --- on one of these types of voting machines during an actual election.

Given the well-documented history of malfunction by ES&S iVotronics and its central tabulating system, along with similarly well-documented scientific reports of how easily those specifics systems can be manipulated --- most easily and directly by election insiders --- it's sounding more and more like there is a serious problem, of some type, in South Carolina's electronic voting system.

For the record, this is not the only questionable race in South Carolina's Democratic primary. We may have more soon on a different race with very odd results. And there are also strange numbers emerging in South Carolina's Republican primary as well, where Schaller's piece quotes a study finding "three counties with more votes cast in [the] Republican governor's race than reported turnout in the Republican primary," resulting in the nearly impossible case of zero overvotes or undervotes in that race, across all three counties.

Or Florida, where the still-unexplained failure by the ES&S iVotronic system resulted in some 18,000 votes disappearing all together in Sarasota in the FL-13 Special Election for the U.S. House in 2006, resulting in a 329 vote "victory" for the Republican candidate Vern Buchanan over Democrat Christine Jennings. Or is it?

"Something smells here," indeed.

* * *

UPDATE 6/14/10: Candidate Vic Rawl has now filed an official protest to the election, charging "unreliability and unverifiability" of election results and vowing "to bring my full energies to electoral reform well into the future." Full details now here...

Yet, even when the evidence is compelling, it seems the investigations never reach conclusion and no elections are ever declared fraudelent or overturned. We are always left hanging with a "nearly proven" fraud, but no indictments. The powers that be are scared to death to call foul in the end.

Just look at the R vote turnout numbers in SC vs Arkansas second R vote turnout result and you can see that DeMental would never have brought the kind of turnout that he had. He is NOT that popular. Not in a primary. I'll bet if you compare his numbers to a general election in the past you'll see that he had less votes in the general. We already know that his votes were 100+% in some precincts.

It's rigged. Why beat around the bush?

Now its a question of where are they getting into the system at.

Machine level?
Precinct to County reporting level?
County to State reporting level?
Mix em up to keep us confused?

Why is anyone surprised, this happened in Georgia years ago changing the entire government and everyone looked the other way instead of demanding receipts and proper accounting. How do you categorize a crime of this magnitude, how do you categorize the lack of response and seeming unwillingness to deal with the subject. I sickens me.

Under the Constitution citizens are guaranteed to have equal rights. The citizens of South Carolina are denied equal rights, compared to citizens in some other states, to know their votes are counted accurately. That makes use of easily hacked, non-auditable, obviously inaccurate electronic voting a federal civil rights issue. Why doesn't some citizen in South Carolina sue the Department of Justice in Federal Court, asking that a writ of mandamus be issed to compel the DOJ to open an investigation based on what appears to be blatent denial of civil rights? Brad, if you will find a lawyer willing to pursue the case, I'd be willing to donate to that cause.

I have to say that the motive to commit election fraud by Demint is very possible. Consider the fact that George Allen and the famous Macaca moment sank one of the Repubs best candidates for President. Consider as well that before Kerry ran for President in 2004 he ran uncontested in his reelection bid for Senate, making him appear to be a very strong candidate. What I'm trying to say is that Demint has made it known that he wants to run for President in 2012, and if he tries to run after a very tight race to reelection, it makes him not look like the best bet among large donors. George Bush was very popular in Texas and he beat a very popular and strong incumbent for Governor. Jeb Bush lost his election for Governor of Florida initially and that shot his chances down for running for President in 2000. And they say, it takes almost 1 billion dollars to run for President now. Demint probably wants to insure that his image remains untarnished as he makes his bid for President in 2012.

The iVotronic machines used in South Carolina have demonstrated unreliable results in other places. One example --- in Arkansas the iVotronics recorded votes in a race that wasn't on the ballot for a candidate who also wasn't on the ballot.

Whether or not there was fraud, the machines are not trustworthy. They should be discarded and replaced by paper ballots, which can be recounted by hand.

Democracy is at risk in South Carolina as long as we continue to put our trust in these faulty machines.

Even if no one hacked machines, these machines have proven unreliable just because they are buggy and THERE ARE NO PAPER BALLOTS to audit the elections.

End this madness,HAND COUNTED PAPER BALLOTs, cheap, easy, fast, and most important, public can view vote count, public can publicly audit elections. Unreliable, unverifiable machines only help cheaters and are a waste of taxpayer money.

Arkansas:
They closed 40 out of 42 precincts, disenfranchising thousands.
The progressive Halter won all the pre-election polls. But the DLC candidate, Blanche (no relation to Abe) Lincoln won a squeaker.

Not a peep about election fraud.

2008 Presidential Election:
Did the MSM ever investigate the staggering discrepancy between Obama's Election Day vote (52% of 121 million) and his late (59% of 10 million) paper ballot votes?

New York State:
What about the last three NY State presidential elections?
The Democrats had a 7% higher late (paper ballot) share than on Election Day (votes were cast on levers but counted on central tabulators).

Not a peep about election fraud.

2008 New Hampshire primary:
Hillary won the machine counts with 52.90%.
But Obama won the hand-counts with 52.90%.
The GOP wanted Hillary. They got her.

Not a peep about election fraud.

How much more do we need to get the MSM to talk about Election Fraud?
The 2010 midterms will be a major train wreck.

My first thought: Without Mike Connell, election rigging just ain't as as seamless as it used to be.

Karenfromillinois reminds us there were "25 precincts in which Greene received more votes than were actually cast and 50 other precincts where votes appeared to be missing from the final count."

I'm wondering if any of my clever BradVillagers have been able to track a pattern with these moving numbers? Is there some method / procedure that reveals a forced, pre-determined manipulation? Like the ex. above: what are we looking at here? 'Vote shaving' = X from the 50 precincts, and 'vote inflating' = Y for 25 of the precincts? I may have that technically wrong and/or way oversimplified, but still - that's the correlation, yes? Seems to me this would be pretty basic code...right, computer people?

And then there are those glimpses we get of "mirror-flipping" the result - those pesky 48% to 51% candidate-to-result ratio bait n ' switches that are hard as hell to prove, an yet so very easy to encode.

In some cases, there doesn't even seem to be an effort to make the numbers APPEAR to work. Simply mind bending to realize these voting vendor super shadies must be 100% assured beyond a doubt that they'll get away with the whole-enchillda-loot n' kaboodle; never worry about getting caught or prosecuted. (Why would they in a country that not only entrusts their sacred votes to whatever junkshit humpers these rightwing tech-trappers dump on us, but a nation that doesn't even bother to watch their votes come in (and out, and in again) on election night.

However this story gets reported (or doesn't) this race presents a real opportunity for us shout out the undisputed facts / impossible math into cyberland and beyond at the tops of our lungs, from every Tweet-shack, with all our greatest, collective heft (once more.)

I am very skeptical of/uncomfortable with electronic voting machines. But something isn't adding up with this theory for me. Maybe the tabulators or a software glitch, but I'm not buying tampering with the machines themselves. Past documented machine errors resulted in "none selected" reverting to the first name on the list. *If* it's a problem with the machines, that would be my guess.

Fivethirtyeight is great for raw numbers. But their analysis quite often sucks. Some stuff they are pointing to (like 2/1 for Rawls in early voting) are just logical results when looking at the specifics of this odd race. The "known" candidate had name ID of like 18% ... there ARE no baselines for that. The boys at fivethirty are kind of masturbating at this point.

I'm putting organized fraud at the bottom of my "possibilities" list below legitimate election. Zero apparent benefit for ANYONE with the power to pull it off, and a boatload of risk. It doesn't add up.

Kent, you must be new here. I get the impression you don't believe electronic voting has ever been tampered with, even though you are sceptical/uncomfortable with it. Please, if I am wrong, tell us an election you feel certain has been hacked.

If you feel there is a better chance Greene was chosen by the people in a legitimate election than as a result of organized fraud, you sir are either complete moron or a willfull obsfucator.

The Washington Post had a story about this in their Saturday paper that dealt exclusively with the question of where did he get the ten grand to file. He is jobless and lives with his father, so it is of interest, but that is as far as the WaPo will go. They go on to say, "political sleuths have not come up with any logical meddler or motive". Kent, are you writing for WaPo?

Not one word about voting machines. If you only get your news from the Post, you may believe the election used hand counted paper ballots. Remarkable.

Just read a great point on democratic underground re. Alvin Greene's selection.... why would dems or repubs vote in a primary and not know the name of the person they vote for? These are people more politically aware and involved....In IA in '05 in a Repub primary, a college student put his name in the running on a lark and got more votes than an established well like incumbent. (names not mentioned)Alvin Greene won in counties with low percentage of blacks. There was a link to Crooks and Liars with a great post on this particular election theft.So more and more people are aware and the ban on so called "progressive" websites of election theft discussion seems to be lifting.

I remember the "man in the middle" attacks that were alleged to have altered the 2004 election results. Where Blackwell supposedly briefly re-routed Ohio's servers through Smartech to report out the results.

It would appear as though South Carolina established a special election night website to report out results (the website is --- www.enr-scvotes.org).

At least according to Netcraft, this website runs through Europe and is registered through GoDaddy!